The Seventh Annual Cinema Verde Environmental Film and Arts Festival will be held February 11-14, 2016 at the Hippodrome with our all-day EcoFair in the surrounding Sun Center Plaza on Valentine’s Day. Please join us for an array of international films presented to raise awareness of environmental concerns and bring our community together to learn about and extend sustainable solutions to the world’s climate, water, waste, energy, food, economy and leadership issues. Please join us to share your success stories and learn from one another!

Our Opening Night VIP Reception kicks off the festival and begins our marathon of 19 feature-length films and 22 shorts from all around the world. Films will be screened at the Hipp Thursday, Friday and Saturday and at Sababa and Omi restaurants during our EcoFair at the Sun Center Plaza on Sunday. Come help us create a sustainable future – the world we want to live in!

In 1958, Johann Radmann has just been appointed Public Prosecutor and pricks up his ears when a teacher is identified as a former Auschwitz guard. Radmann begins to examine the case, falls out with friends, colleagues and allies, and is sucked into a labyrinth of lies in his search for the truth. What he ultimately brings to light will change Germany forever.

The German-Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt caused an uproar in the 1960s by coining the subversive concept the “banality of evil” when referring to the trial of Adolph Eichmann, which she covered for the New Yorker. Her private life was no less controversial. This thought provoking and spirited documentary, with its abundance of archival materials, offers an intimate portrait of one of the most influential thinkers of the 20th century.

Without family, a synagogue or a single Jewish friend, the hardened survivor has so effectively created a new identity that, when faced with his own mortality, the rabbis refuse his appeal to be buried in a Jewish cemetery in Cologne. Determined to return to his birthplace and establish his ancestry, Marcus enlists the help of a young Turkish woman with a troubled history of her own. The unlikely duo sets out on a journey that will irrevocably change them both.

Meir Cohen is a decorated police officer who barely earns a living. His new assignment is deporting African migrant workers from Israel “of their own free will.” Moving between scathing realism and subtle irony, the film raises questions of belonging and uprooting, exile and emigration, home and family

Two men, each the son of very high-ranking Nazi officials in Poland and the Ukraine and possess starkly contrasting attitudes toward their fathers, engage in intense conversation with an eminent Jewish human rights lawyer whose own grandfather escaped the same town where their fathers carried out mass killings. The three embark on an emotional journey together, stimulating a unique view of the father-son relationship, and ultimately coming to some very unexpected and difficult conclusions.

Based on the book by acclaimed author David Bezmozgis, Natasha is the story of Mark, the young son of Russian- Jewish immigrants living in the suburbs north of Toronto. When his uncle enters into an arranged marriage, the woman arrives in Canada with her fourteen year-old daughter, Natasha. Mark, a slacker, is conscripted by his parents to take responsibility for the strange girl. He learns that, in Moscow, she’d led a troubled and promiscuous life. A secret and forbidden romance begins between the two of them.​

After leaving Morocco as a child amidst ethnic tensions spurred by the Yom Kippur War, the son of a once famous Jewish musician returns to his land of birth to bury his father. Aided by an e centric cab driver, his search for the former members of his father’s band unexpectedly reanimates his connection to the life he knew prior to emigration.

More than any other segment of Jewry, Haredim or the Ultra-Orthodox take Purim seriously, celebrating the commandment to imbibe well beyond moderation and provide charity so that even the poorest families can celebrate a holiday feast. Like his acclaimed previous film Sacred Sperm, this one takes us deep into the life and customs of a community apart sharing details and understandings that are bound to surprise most viewers.

The smash-hit TV series Srugim focuses on a small group of Modern Orthodox thirty somethings living in the so-called Katamon swamp of West Jerusalem and each of their quest for love, marriage and family. This richly textured, exquisitely rendered portrayal of Jewish custom, follows the wedding day of the first of the group to become a couple.

About The Hipp

The Hippodrome is Gainesville's cultural centerpiece offering live theatre, films, gallery exhibits, classes, and special events over 340 days a year. The Hipp. It's close to home, but far from ordinary!